I hope all of you are safe, healthy, and paying attention to the new in your area so you can remain that way. From what I’ve seen, the U.S. government is doing all it can to help those hardest hit, and my local authorities in Michigan are doing what they can.

Stay safe, stay informed, and follow local guidance.

Here’s my week, folks. Luckily, since I complete all of my work on my laptop, my productivity has been unaffected by recent events. I know some of you are dealing with some real adversity. I hope you are OK, and conditions in your home country continue to improve for you and your loved ones.

Social (practicing social distancing, but staying in touch with Wife, Brother, Sister, and friends)

I hope all of you are safe and remain that way. If anyone is isolated or alone, and you need someone to talk with, feel free to reach out to me in the comments. We can work something out to connect with each other via phone, video chat, or some other medium.

Life has a tendency to smack us around a bit. Like the picture above, life gives us a toss. Then we get back up and keep moving forward or we decide to stay off that crazy horse. It’s all up to us.

I choose to get up. I don’t care how many times the horse kicks me off. I’ll keep getting back on until that horse figures out that I am crazy enough to keep getting back on. I’m like the Irishmen who keeps blind-siding the bully until the bully gets tired of breaking his hands on my face.

The moral of the story: Don’t quit. Keep going. This ancient wisdom make so much sense, yet so many quit anyway.

Here’s my schedule for the week:

Learn Spanish daily

Python daily

Work on my book daily

American History daily

Algebra daily

MS Publisher daily

Blog daily

Social Media daily

Exercise daily

Meditate daily

Read 1 chapter daily

Journal daily

I hope all of you have a great week! Feliz lunes para ti (Happy Monday to you).

Ask any sports legend, concert pianist, actor, writer, anyone with any skill and they will all tell you they got where they are by practice and repetition. They practiced, and practiced, and practiced.

When I served in the Army, we did the same thing. We practiced. We repeated. We worked on something until you could do it in your sleep. That’s the key. To transform a skill from conscious practice to subconscious execution. Then you practice more.

Repetition can be boring. It is tough to stick with something every day. But for those of you who understand the power behind repetition, you know that sometimes you dread doing something you did yesterday, and the day before. The mind loves novelty and will fight it.

Stick with it. Keep doing it. Don’t stop. Greatness and mastery are on the other side of the boredom and repetition.

Well, we are in the last month of the year. It went by quickly didn’t it?

This is the month to grind it out before we hit the holiday weeks. When the holiday week hits, the family will be coming, you’ll be doing last-minute holiday shopping, and it will preclude anything you want to finish. So dig in now, at the early part of the month and knock down any of the goals you have left. It’s not too late.

Between Christmas and New Year’s is the perfect time to take a tally of what you set out to do this year, where you missed the mark, and plan accordingly for the new year. There are a few goals I missed, not due to a lack of effort, but they reached a little too far. This year, I’ll use that data and set more realistic goals that I can achieve by the end of next year. They’ll still stretch me, but won’t be so far off in the distance that it will be impossible to accomplish.

One of the greatest learnings I have discovered this year is consistently showing up. I started the year with a goal of reading 48 books, at last count, I am at 60+ for the year and still going. I also finished the rough draft of my non-fiction book on technical recruiting and began work on my fiction story. These would not have been possible, had I not done something every day to move the needle forward.

What goals did you set? Did you accomplish them? Did you fall short like I did? If you fell short, how will you goal yourself in that area next year? I’m really curious to hear from others on this topic. Feel free to respond in the comments below. Ok, here’s my weekly schedule!

This week:

Work on Story Beats for my Fiction book daily

Exercise daily (see my workout routine for the week of Dec 1, 2019)

Read 1 hour daily

Meditate daily

Complete 1 session for each of the 5 classes I’m taking daily

Clear the circles on my Apple Watch Daily

Hang out at my local coffee shops or a restaurant daily

Read my Bible Daily

Do a random act of kindness while I’m out running errands daily

Help my wife with her Master’s Degree work daily

Have some fun daily (Netflix, Xbox, NFL Football, or Disney+) daily

Log my food in MyFitnessPal daily

Well, that’s it for now, folks! I hope each of you are looking forward to the holidays like I am. I realize there are some in my audience who dread the holidays and my heart goes out to you. You know what I’ve found? When you’re down, volunteer. Go to an animal shelter, an orphanage, hospice, or some other charitable organization and pitch in. It’s a great time to do this, and it is also a way to focus on something else. I have always found that giving and serving others is a great way to cheer up.

I got the feeling it was pretty boring reading my workout everyday, so I’ve opted to put down my schedule for the week. Feel free to use this for yourself if you are so inclined. This is what I’ll be doing this week, as I head back to the gym. It is a very basic workout, but one that will slowly get my body used to moving some weights. I’ve been out of the gym and doing home workouts everyday to get my habit back, after some inconsistent exercise warned me that I had lost the exercise habit.

Now that the habit is back, it’s time to start crushing the metal again.

Well, it’s the end of another week! I hope all of you had a great weekend and are getting ready for the upcoming week. Life is an adventure, isn’t it?

I wanted to thank all of the new readers for following Daily Ramblings this week. As mentioned in other postings on my blog, I am shooting for 500 followers by the end of this year. If you know of anyone who would benefit from this blog, please pass this along. I’d really like to hit my goal!

I would also like any of you who would like to see different topics or discussions to make suggestions. I’ll entertain all of them. Simply leave a comment and I’ll give you word personally whether I’ll use that or not.

For those of you who are new, my weekly writing schedule is as follows:

I want to welcome all of my new followers to Daily Ramblings! Just so you know, my postings follow a daily category. These categories are as follows:

Monday Motivation

Tuesday Ted Talks

Wednesday Wisdom

Thursday Thinking

Friday Funny

Saturday Spiritual

Sunday Thank you and Character Improvement Series (once a month on the first Sunday).

Thank you very much for following Daily Ramblings. As always, if you have any suggestions, any topics you’d like to see or maybe even an adjustment to my weekly schedule, feel free to pass along your suggestions.